FRIDAY’S COVENTRY Conversation saw Google’s head of communications and public affairs, Peter Barron talk about what Google has been doing to take digital technology to a new level. Writes Natasha De Silva

It was surprising to know that there are 3.6 Billion+ searches worldwide everyday and over one billion videos streamed on YouTube while more than 800 Million people visit social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Peter Barron spoke about Google Street View: “The idea is to allow you to explore the destination or have a look at somewhere that you can’t necessarily go to.” He promised that the next phase of Street View will be coming to the UK very soon.

He also introduced to the audience ‘Google Insights for Search’ where you can see the trend of the number of people who have searched for a particular key word.

Introducing the Google phone Peter Barron predicts that “mobile phones are going to change the very nature of the web in a very short period of time.” ‘Google Goggles’ is the best example for that, it enables you to use the camera on your phone and take a picture of things which will then be used to tell you what the picture is of.

Peter Barron commended the computer scientists of Google by calling them the “superstars” of the company who are always thinking about the next great innovation.

When confronted about the newspapers who say that Google is a parasite on their content Peter Barron said: “It’s a fundamental misunderstanding. What happens with newspapers is that they put news up on the web for free every day, what we do with Google News is that we direct people to those websites.”

Although there has been some controversy about Google, Peter Barron made it clear that it’s all about trust. “You search on Google because it’s fast, accurate and you trust the results you get from it. If any of those didn’t apply you would quickly go elsewhere so we have to rebuild that trust everyday and try to make it ever better.”